Millimeter-Wave SAR-Imaging With Radar Networks Based on Radar Self-Localization

In this article, an imaging system is presented, which is solely based on distributed radar sensors mounted on a mobile platform, such as a robot or vehicle. The data of multiple distributed sensors, which perform fast chirp-sequence measurements, are processed together. This enables both a highly accurate ego-motion estimation and a coherent synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging based on it. This system is independent of any additional sensors, such as an inertial measurement unit (IMU) for motion estimation or a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) for self-localization. Measurements using four sensors are carried out at 77 GHz to verify simulations.